About Me

I'm a student at Ringling college of art and design, the graphic design and interactive communications department. i moved to the united states after i had graduated from the fine art school in the university of Damascus. Throughout my little journey I've been blessed to have tried and learned too many things that would enrich my background as an artist and graphic designer. my name (jihad) is a big controversial topic nowadays that i would like to give a little explanation for ... jihad the word has no literal translation in English ... the best way to define it though is, it's the process in which someone is making a significant effort to overcome hardships, towards better life and better future. I think it's a really good way to define me as a person as well.

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Friday, July 18, 2008

Have we totally lost our judgment for good and bad???

Wasn't gonna talk about this bad experience till i was walking through the crowds leaving the movie theater -after I watched the DARK NIGHT movie- where all i could hear was "my god, that was awesome", "duuuuuuude, that was amazing", "definitely the best movie I've seen so far". Jesus Christ, have people lost their freaking mind?

If you are a friend of mine, you would know how much i hate super hero movies, and I'll back that up with reasons. Assuming that the story is the most important component for making a movie, if the writer can't make a story interesting enough to captivate the audience, so he relys on throwing some makeup on the star and giving him super powers, well eff him and his movie. And if you're wondering why did i go to watch a movie that i hate that much, i would tell you that the first reason was that my other choice was sitting home alone with my broken arm, and second was, and I'm not gonna lie to you, i thought i would give it a shot... maybe this time it'll prove me wrong.

That's exactly how the movie went... the opening shot was the Joker robbing a bank, no intro, no easing into the story "assuming that there was a story", no conflict, nothing... absolutely nothing. then Batman comes into play, he sure gets beat by the Joker throughout the whole damn movie, which was like 2 hours and a half, and finally when the moment of truth comes and Batman eventually got hold of the Joker, the story takes a weird turn and no body mentions anything concerning the Joker anymore, it feels like the Joker never even existed in this movie, it's like the audience is dumb or something. it felt to me like as the writer was writing the movie he was thinking "let's try to shoot down all of the principles of writing a story, no intro, no conflict, no conclusion, no closer, nothing. and we'll see how it goes". Two hours and a half of waiting for the moment when the super hero is gonna get that MF pretty good, and then i could discharge all of the anger caused by the movie by watching this villain dying or something, ended with nothing.

another thing, when did the characters switch rolls and the Joker become the cool tough guy and Batman become that big of a pussy. Even if we look at actors in the movie, the only one that was awful was Christian Bale who you'd think should be the best actor, or maybe i might have misunderstood the terms "star" and "main roll". then you look at Heath Ledger, he may rest in peace, who was nothing less than a genius in his roll. i could totally say that i hated Batman and loved the Joker just out of the actors' performance, not to mention again that Batman was stupid even in the movie.

Eventually and to be fair, i liked a couple of things that totally didn't make up for the bad things but it wouldn't be fair to be just on the bad side. As i mentioned before Heath Ledger did a great job and i personally think that no one would be better than him doing the Joker. Aaron Eckhart did a great job in the movie as well which gave the movie a couple of extra points. I liked a couple of lines from the movie like "things always get worse before they get better" and "live as a villain or die as a hero", but the overall was still bad.

and just to close with, and for those who defend the lack of conclusion or closer by saying it's a trilogy, and the end would be in the third part; A trilogy doesn't mean three episodes of one movie like a TV show or something, a trilogy consist of three movies that might fall into three eras or three locations...etc and those movies would concern the same characters or related characters, but that doesn't mean that each of those movies wouldn't have a full structure of a movie, other wise they would be three bad movies, and we have an example in our hands here.

2 comments:

Haven't seen that movie yet. Read your description though, about the best films coming from the best stories. I respectfully disagree. It's all about how the story is told. Which is why they say there are (at least) two sides to every story. Under your definition, there's a black and white story and that's that. The details, the perspective, the pace and tone - none of that matter? A beautiful event won't always be re-told as a great story. And a silly tale may be told beautifully. Discount all "hero stories" if you like, that's totally your choice. I just think it's like a sport, where it's not the biggest or fastest who's always going to win. The intangibles, the details, the presentation - that's at least as important as the plot.

with all respect for your opinion... a well-told bad story is still a bad story that's been told well, it will never be a good story. eventually what we seek as professionals in the artistic field is perfection, which means yes you were right, it's either black or white. if you settle for the grays you'll never seek better quality. at last and not the least, details and presentation are like makeup, it makes the beautiful girl gorgeous, but it'll never make the ugly girl beautiful, it'll just make it less ugly.